Tag Archives: license

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Great Blue Heron Taking Flight

November 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

A great blue heron takes flight from a foggy field at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge California

To retell a story I’ve shared before, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that despite living in California for decades I had barely been aware of the astonishing winter migratory bird population of the state’s Central Valley until a chance encounter with a colleague led to a “wild goose chase” trip into an area south of Sacramento not so long ago. Now I’m now officially hooked! I’m certainly no expert on these birds – geese, herons, egrets, and more – but I’ve become very interested in seeing and photographing them.

While returning from another trip last month I saw a flock of geese over the Central Valley, and was reminded that this seasonal migration is again underway. I resolved to try to get out there earlier this year, and I made my first trip a few days after Thanksgiving. I drove over Pacheco Pass through Los Banos, entered the valley fog, and headed out to the Merced National Wildlife Refuge, a place I’m starting to know rather well. The fog was even thicker when I arrived at the refuge, and I could hear a lot more birds than I could really see, though I did catch a faint view of a flock of white Ross’s geese through the murk at one point. Eventually the fog began to thin a bit, and here and there muted sunlight began to shine through. As I circled the refuge I saw this lone great blue heron standing in a field in this transitional light. Using my car as a blind, I stopped a ways back and used my longest lens to make several photographs as the bird mostly stood there. Bit by bit, I was able to edge the car forward and continue to shoot from the driver’s seat, eventually being roughly parallel with the bird. I stopped and shut off the engine and continued to watch and make more photographs. Eventually, the heron apparently got bored with me and lifted off to find more interesting company, and I was able to get a couple of shots as this impressive bird took to the still-foggy air.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Red Maple Trees, Autumn

November 26, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn red maple trees growing against a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park

Sometimes I just have to make a photograph that is full of color, and finding these trees constituted one of those “sometimes.” During the latter part of October we passed through Zion on our way to points east, so we spent most of a day along the Mount Carmel Highway looking for various subjects that can be found there in a fall. Among them, we were looking for autumn foliage. (The color comes to this high country area of Zion while things are still mostly green back down in Zion Canyon.) At this point some cottonwood and box elder trees were changing, though there was a lot of green still around. However, the red maples, which seem to change first, were at peak color conditions in many spots.

As we drove along the park road, we were more or less hanging out the windows, looking for those combinations of light (quality and angle), color (or trees and rocks), and geology that might make good photographs. Most often we found ourselves looking down into narrow canyons where colorful trees lined the banks of the stream beds. Sometimes we photographed from above, but the most productive shooting involved hiking down into these canyons and then slowly walking them while looking intently for subjects. Of course, the red maples don’t require a lot of careful looking! This group of trees was in a shady curve in the bottom of a canyon, so I found a frame-filling bunch of branches and leaves and made a few exposures.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Canyon Reflections, Utah

November 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Reflections in the surface of a slot canyon stream, Utah

Among photographers that I know, finding ways to photograph the surface of flowing river and creek water is almost a bit of a game or even an obsession. There is something very appealing about either stopping the motion of the water, or about using longer shutter speeds to let the water blur, revealing the smooth patterns of flowing water and the interesting colorations that we can otherwise easily overlook. People I know seem to have developed their own little idiosyncratic tricks for working with this subject – special shutter speeds, an eye for particular types of reflections, and so forth.

The Utah canyons are a prime place to look for interesting reflection patterns, at least in those canyons in which the water is flowing. This narrow desert canyon contained a small, burbling steam – just enough water to be interesting and dampen boots and pants legs, but not so much as to impede progress up the canyon or make shooting difficult. The trick is to look beyond the apparent surface of the water and instead learn to look for and see the reflections instead. Part of this is looking for interesting flow and ripple patterns, such as the bit of faster moving water moving diagonally across the frame in this image. Another part is to anticipate and then find sources of reflected colored light. This photograph includes several: blue from overhead sky visible above the center of the canyon, purple and burgundy from shaded cliff faces, intense orange reflected from sunlit sandstone, and bright yellow-green from cottonwood and box elder trees.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Balanced Rock and Cliff, Sunrise

November 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn light on Balanced Rock and cliff face, Arches National Park

When I first visited Utah for photography, only in April of this year, I think that Arches National Park probably provoked the most serious “wow” response from me. I loved each of the parks we visited in different way, but the first-impression of Arches was, for me, stunning. It probably helped that I had more or less intentionally done no research on the place before our arrival. It also helped that my first view of the park was on a spontaneous golden-hour drive into the park from Moab late in the day, when we found ourselves with more time after arriving than we had planned on. I was stunned to see what seem to be essentially impossible formations throughout the park – the arches themselves, of course, but also the tall thin towers, long and narrow fins of sandstone, large rocks balancing on pedestals, and more.

On the second visit, this fall, I was still impressed by these amazing formation, but I also began to look past them a bit more and start to see a few of the subtle things that are there as well, and to begin to understand a few of the patterns of the place – where and when certain types of special light or atmosphere might occur. On this morning I had returned to re-shoot something that had not worked out quite the way I planned on the previous visit. Having completed that task, we moved on up the road, looking for other opportunities, of which there were many. Here, as we passed one of the large towers in the Courthouse area, I saw a photograph that juxtaposed several things: the silhouetted shape of the balanced rock on the far ridge, the brilliant morning sidelight on the nearby sandstone tower, and the early morning sun slanting across the petrified dunes area, picking up the higher points on the terrain.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: license

Great Blue Heron Taking Flight

Red Maple Trees, Autumn

Canyon Reflections, Utah

Balanced Rock and Cliff, Sunrise

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.